MOOC changing universities forever, and for the better

University education has been described as the process whereby the notes of the professor become those of the student, without going through the minds of either. The lecture system began in early medieval Europe when the gilded youth of the time gathered to learn from scholars who had access to books and who had acquired much wisdom from other sources.

Universities remained elite institutions until after the Second World War, when demand for advanced education exploded. Governments poured money into existing universities as they expanded, and encouraged the creation of new ones. The lecture system remained the basis of teaching, even as knowledge in all fields expanded at an exponential rate.

With the arrival of this millennium, a sea change took place in university education. Post-secondary institutions found themselves with rising costs and shrinking government funding. Faculty and students went on strike. A university degree no longer guaranteed a job. Graduates found themselves with large debts and limited prospects for employment.

The monopoly of universities on advanced education is being broken by new ways of learning that lower the cost of it.

In the middle of the 19th century, a group of innovative Nova Scotians chartered the University of Halifax. Students could study anywhere or in any way they liked, taking exams when they felt ready to do so. The established universities pressured the government to kill this initiative.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) revive this idea. They enable students to take responsibility for their own learning, and acquire knowledge in their own way and in their own time. With the tap of a computer key, learners connect with the best brains and the best courses in the world. Coursera, Udacity and edX provide technology to do this: They offer access to 200 courses at 33 universities. Udacity and San Jose State University will offer three introductory math courses, free. Credit for each course costs $150.

The lecture system operates on the mistaken belief that all students have the same knowledge base and learning abilities. Technology developed by Desire2Learn enables teachers to meet individual learning needs. They monitor the progress of students using D2L’s software, helping them to overcome any problems they encounter.

Universities are adapting, slowly, to the changed educational environment. Executive MBA programs build on what participants know. The Nova Scotia Community College has an excellent Prior Learning Assessment program that helps students to determine what they already know, sharpening their focus to enhance self-knowledge and an understanding of the demands of the economy and society. Pioneering professors, acting as enablers, animators and encouragers, motivate students by finding what interests them. Librarians help learners to sort the wheat from the chaff, sense from nonsense, signals from noise in the vast deluge of information that threatens to swamp them.

Universities are not exempt from the imperative of rapid change: adapt, innovate — or die. It’s unlikely that they will disappear from the educational landscape. But unless they take advantage of new technologies and new ways of learning, they may become mere shells of their former selves. All that will remain of them will be a few research centres, football teams, and a handful of students flitting between the ghostly towers of empty buildings.

Jim Lotz is a former university professor who has his own problems with new technology.